You Should Never Put Your Feet on Your Car Dashboard! – A Mum Recounts Her Near Death Experience

Audra Tatum, a mother of three from Walker County, Georgia, has released disturbing photos to show people why they should never put their feet on the dashboard while in a car.

Tatum,31, would always lean back and relax with her feet up on the dashboard. Her husband Nick warned her about the dangerous habit, but Tatum didn’t care as it was comfortable, The Sun gathers.

But two years ago, on August 2, 2015, the couple was heading to her parents’ house about 4 miles away to pick up her two sons when a car pulled in front of her husband and they T-boned him.

Nick and their 10-year-old daughter were able to walk away from the scene with scrapes and bruises, except for Tatum.

She was left permanently disabled after the crash that left her needing two screws in her ankle, two in her hip, two in her knee and unable to stand for more than four hours.

Now, she wishes she listened to him.

“All my life I had my legs crossed and my foot on the dash. My husband always told me, ‘You’re going to get in a wreck someday, and you’re going to break your legs,”’ Tatum told CBS News.

Tatum assured him he was wrong.

“I’ll put my foot down in time,” she would always reply.

When the crash happened, the airbag threw her foot into her face breaking her ankle, nose, and femur in four places.

Tatum added that when the collision happened she had no time to move.

”The airbag went off, throwing my foot up and breaking my nose. I was looking at the bottom of my foot facing up at me.

Basically my whole right side was broken, and it’s simply because of my ignorance. I’m not Superman. I couldn’t put my foot down in time.”

Tatum underwent several surgeries and weeks of physical therapy. It took her over a month to start walking again.

Two years later, she’s still facing obstacles.

“I can’t do my career as an EMS. I can’t lift patients anymore,” she explained. “I can’t stand more than 4 hours at a time. Once I’m at that 4-hour mark I’m in tears.”

Now the mom is using her story to warn others.

“I keep telling everybody, you don’t want this life,” she said. “You don’t want the pain and agony every day.”

She wrote on her Facebook page:

”Two years ago yesterday a man in a stolen car pulled out in front of us. I was a passenger. We tboned him at 45mph.

My foot was on the dash. The air bag went off… my foot broke my nose. Nose broke ankle. Femur broke into 4 pieces. And arm broke trying to stop impact. I have so many screws and Rods and I am miserable to this day!!

”DON’T RIDE OR LET PEOPLE RIDE LIKE THIS!!!!!! I am disabled at 31 years old from this. No one else was hurt. Just me. I lost my career and all from that day.”

Picture credit: Audra Tatum/ GoFundMe